Digi cam deterioration?

[ChristinaM]

excuse the title spelling.

Do digi cam's deteriorate?
I've had mine for ummmm 2.5yrs or so....it's nothing fancy. a Sony DSC P31. I've noticed that the pic quality has been poorer lately ( last couple months ). The pic, on highest resolution, sometimes comes out grainy, and out of focus. I'm 99% sure this is not a user error :)

I've formatted the mem stick, made no diffrence.

Is there something inside a cam that can wear out over time? ( I do not know anything about the insides of a cam ).

Any thoughts?

[VooDooMafia]

I still have my first digi cam (Kodak) and I have had it for about 5 years now with no differance in the quality (prolly taken about 300,000 pics as I love to snap).

Although I have bought new ones since then I still use this when I just need a quick shot.

You might want to try cleaning teh lens as that could be one problem. ALso if you have been using the same memory card it could be that. Just like any other disc/hard drive or storage unit the more you use it the worse the quality will get.

Hope this helps but without a personal exame of the camera I can't be 100% on the problem.

Pete

[ChristinaM]

Thanks Pete :) I will definately clean it thoroughly, and am in the market for a new card as I only have an 8MB card in it now. Definately something worth checking :)

[VooDooMafia]

Just an FYI tigerdirect always has them on sale I just picked up a few 128MB cards for $18.00 each and I didn't find a differance in teh picture quality (thought I would try them out after I read your post).

[ChristinaM]

is that online?

[VooDooMafia]

www.tigerdirect.ca ;)

[ChristinaM]

thank ya muchly :)